Regenesis

“Jordan?”

Last bite. She pressed a silent signal, and Haze came in and removed the plates, while Ya

Haze refilled Ya

“Jordan knew about Eversnow,” she said. “He said he did. I gave you thattranscript, too Did you lie to me, Ya

Ya

“In your office before you left. Thatwas what the fight was really about.”

“Young sera, you know quite a lot.”

“It was pretty famous, Uncle Ya

Long silence. And Haze wasn’t going to come back in until signaled.

“We’re the same generation,” Ya

“Somebody slipped that card into his pocket, and it turned up, he says, the night you got back from Novgorod, from all this dealing. You didn’t do that, did you?”

“No.”

“Can I believe that? Did anybody working for you do it? Do I have to pare it down until something finally fits?”

“I have no idea where that came from, or, more to the point, how whoever did it knew Jordan knew– ifthey knew Jordan knew. It’s a damned maze. And it wasn’t my doing.”

“He’s co

“Thieu did know something, because we made a request for his Eversnow notes back when we set this up.”

“Thieu hadnotes on Eversnow in his files?”

“He doesn’t, now. Didn’t. We borrowed them and didn’t return them. But yes, he was doing some work on that once upon a time. Defense had used his work, in their little version of the Eversnow project. We’d studied it. It’s foundational to what we propose to do next.”

“Hell, Ya

“It’s a worrisome piece of information to leave out, I agree. Doubly so, now.”

“I don’t suppose Patil phoned Thieu to advise him when she got the appointment. I don’t suppose she said the word Eversnow.”

“He didn’t get a phone call. He did get the advisement back in April that she’d taken a job at ReseuneSpace on Fargone: she sent him a message to that effect, He was not mentally what he had been. But possibly–possibly he did put two and two together. Possibly he knew very well what she was doing, a nanistics Special on the farthest station outward, next to Eversnow. Where he would have gone, if they’d gone ahead with his program.”

“And before that he was bedeviling Jordan to contact her. Contact her. As if Jordan could. But we have just a slight clue what he wanted Jordan to find out, don’t we? If you gave Patil his notes…don’t you think that explains just a little bit? He had no warning at all that Jordan was actually going to get out of Planys. But he knew Jordan had contacts inside Reseune, that he has a son here. And you just lifted his files and sent them where he couldn’t get them, so small wonder he was a little agitated. How long ago?”

“During Denys’ tenure. Late last year.”

“The man was a Special. It was his life’s work. His stuff was disappearing. They were never going to run his work on Cyteen. He knew that better than anybody, if he’d managed the remediation program. And there’s the military nanistics program–he worked on that during the War, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And he workedon Eversnow, you snatched his files, and he knew the only planet we own where it’s remotely appropriate to use the terraforming data isEversnow. And Patil was moving to Fargone, right next door.”

“He was in rejuv failure. The notes were classified. It was perfectly logical we take them, in his retirement. We don’t know how much of all that he put together. The rejuv failure was progressing fast. We’re talking about a few months, here.”

“Does Patil have them in her possession? Were they possibly in her apartment?”

Ya

She let go a short breath. “Thank God for that.”

“She didn’t have them, and they’re in a military courier’s black box en route. Nobody can get at them butsomeone with the keyword.”

It didn’t make her feel that much better. “So Defense has them.”

“Can’t access them. Not unless they’ve messed with the black boxes themselves. Don’t even talk about getting into those. Elections. The stock market. Public records. There’s deeper security on that system than anything else we’ve got. It’ll feed into Fargone Central, totally robotic, and it has a gate‑restriction on it. It won’t feed out again until someone arrives there with a password. That’s the way it works. Those notes will be sealed, until someone authorized shows up there.”

“What password? Do you know it? Or who does know it?”

“I won’t tell you here. I know it. I hadn’t even told Patil. I willtell you.”

“Do. Please. That’s too thin a thread, Ya

“Sera.”

“Paper.”

Catlin went to a sideboard, got a single sheet of paper and a pen, and gave them to Ya

Then 28912HW. And W/18.

She tucked that paper into her decolletage. “Ash before midnight,” she said. “Thank you, Ya

A nod of his head. Catlin had resumed her place. Likely had already memorized it, in the one glance she’d gotten. Catlin was good at that.

“So do we have a copy here at Reseune?” she asked.

“It’s there,” he said. “Filed in your archive.”

She had to be amused. They hadn’t turned it up by accident. It wasn’t part of the ordinary Library archive, nor Security’s ordinary file, not out there. “What else have you stored in my files?”

“Just things your successor might need. Or you might. Someday.”

“Clever.”

Ya

“Or Thieu’s. Thieu’sis the place I’d expect them to go after.”

“And he was dying. It was a good idea to get those files entirely out of there. Beyond an erase. They’re gone from storage at Planys.”

“And they’re here. Under my name. And in that ship, outbound. The only copies in the universe.”

“The only copies.”

“Nothing at Beta.”

“Nothing at Beta–at least on our side of the wall. If Defense has a copy, we can’t find that.”

“So Thieu wants to know what’s going on with his files. The man may have been going downhill fast, but he wasn’t stupid. Jordan meanwhile didn’t want to get involved in his scheme–”

“Jordan was involved in another information flow,” Ya